I stopped by the Nvidia booth, where an Nvidia representative gave a quick demonstration (see video) of the tablet from Seattle, WA-based ICD. It has an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, which is expected to find its way into a number of tablets this year.

The tablet performed well for a prototype, though the unusable Wi-Fi connection on the CES show floor made wireless connectivity impossible. The device will also come, of course, with 3G connectivity, but that, too, was unavailable for the demonstration.

The tablet was impressive, if only because it booted up and was actually running. Companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Marvell talked about tablets at CES but had little (concepts) or nothing to show. In fact, the tablet demonstration at the Marvell booth consisted of a piece of plastic that resembled a tablet with a fake paper display (essentially a printout of a mockup of an interface).

Correction: Based on information provided by Nvidia, this story incorrectly reported that the prototype was a Motorola-Verizon tablet. It is not a Motorola-Verizon tablet but a tablet supplied by ICD running a Motorola-Verizon interface on top of the Android operating system.

About the author

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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